This disclosure is directed primarily to the use of the novel coloring agent in peanut butter. Conventional processes for making peanut butter products include the steps of roasting shelled peanuts, cooling and blanching the roasted peanuts to remove the skins, removing the germs from the blanched peanuts, sorting and discarding objectionable peanuts, and finely grinding the acceptable peanuts to obtain a peanut paste. Either before, during or after grinding, additional components are usually added such as sweeteners and salt to achieve desired flavor, a stabilizer to prevent oil separation, and emulsifiers and food grade oils to impart desired mouth feel, melt down in the mouth and good spreadability. The resulting paste can optionally be reground after the additional components are mixed into it to obtain a creamy peanut butter product.
The stabilizers generally employed are high melting fats having a melting point greater than about 110.degree. F., but less than about 160.degree. F. Exemplary of such stabilizers are partially and/or completely hydrogenated fats, mono- and/or di-glyceride esters of saturated fatty acids, and mixtures thereof.
Suitable emulsifiers include fatty monoglycerides, lecithin, and the like.
Illustrative of the food grade oils that can be used are peanut oil, cottonseed oil, palm oil, palm kernel oil, coconut oil, corn oil, soybean oil, and the like, as well as mixtures thereof.
The prior art as characterized in U.S. Pat. No. 3,619,207 has taught the blanching of the peanuts (i.e., removing the skins from the peanuts) in order to limit the amount of peanut skins to no more than about 0.75%, by weight, of the peanut paste component present. When more than this amount of peanut skins is present, the resulting peanut butter will contain dark specks and/or impart a bitter aftertaste. Conventional processing techniques show a marked preference for an upper limit of about 0.15% skins in the peanut paste.
Attempts have been made to increase the peanut skin content of peanut butter products in order to increase the intensity of the roasted flavor, impart a fuller peanut flavor, enhance the roasted color of the peanut butter, and the like. While some of these attempts have minimized the presence of dark specks in the product, the bitter aftertaste often imparted to the product had to be compensated for by increasing its sweetener content.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,619,207 to Dzurik et al. (assigned to The Procter & Gamble Co.) discloses a method for producing a peanut butter in which the particle size of the peanut paste is controlled by a homogenizing step after initial grinding. This patent discloses that up to about 5% peanut skins, by weight, of the peanut paste may be incorporated into the peanut paste during homogenization of the peanut paste. The particle size of all components in the peanut paste is such that the largest particle is no more than 80 microns, and preferably at least 55% of the particles are in the range of 8-20 microns and preferably no more than 30% of the particles are less than 10 microns in size. This particle sizing is accomplished due to high pressure and high velocity homogenizer conditions. As the level of peanut skins is increased into the range of 2-4% by weight of the peanut butter product, it becomes necessary to add additional sweeteners, at least 3% by weight and, preferably 4-10% by weight, to obtain an acceptable taste in the final product. This homogenized peanut butter with the added skins is said to have an appearance comparable to conventional peanut butter, that is, about the same or fewer specks as compared to conventional peanut butter.
It has been determined that if 100% native skins were left in a conventional peanut butter that they would make up about 3.5% of the weight of such finished product. However, problems of bitterness (i.e., off flavors) and of visible specks predominate in conventionally processed peanut butters having over about 0.15% peanut skins based on weight of peanut derived components.
An attempt was made to produce a conventional (that is, not highly sweetened) peanut butter containing 100% of the normal skin component and a major portion of the germ (50-60%). This product was speck laden as if it were sprinkled with larger particles of black pepper. Thereafter, this speckled product was passed through a Gaulin type homogenizer to further reduce the skin (speck) size and the attempt was successful in reducing the undesirable characteristics.
It was felt that the peanut skins might be directly introduced into the homogenizer for size reduction. This proved to be unsuccessful since the skins clogged the homogenizer. Then an attempt to disperse the skins by milling with a peanut butter product, resulting in a product containing pepper-like specks. It was further observed that homogenization and/or excessive milling of the total mass to reduce particle size of the skins caused a loss of desirable flavor volatiles and the presence of off flavors due to the high temperature generated during milling.